Gandalf vs. Brody: Ian McKellen and Damian Lewis Engage in War of Words

As if there weren’t enough people Sgt. Brody has antagonized at this point, he has now earned the ire of none other than Gandalf. Yes, Damian Lewis and Ian McKellen are in a straight-up feud.

It all started when Lewis told the Guardian in October that he had always had a fear, when he was beginning his acting career in his twenties, that he would be destined to become “one of these slightly over-the-top, fruity actors who would have an illustrious career on stage, but wouldn't start getting any kind of film work until I was 50 and then start playing wizards.” Now, while he did not specifically call out Sir McKellen, the reference was clear—or, at least, clear enough to McKellen that he felt like addressing it.

McKellen, speaking to the Radio Times, called Lewis’ remarks “fair” (this is as genteel as celebrity spats get), but set forth that “no one needs to feel sorry for me or Michael Gambon [Harry Potter’s Dumbledore] or anyone else who has fallen victim to success.” He continued, “I wouldn’t like to have been one of those actors who hit stardom quite early on and expected it to continue and was stuck doing scripts that I didn't particularly like just to keep the income up.”

As for that “fruity” adjectival choice, McKellen offered a, well, almost academic response: “As for a fruity voice? Well, it may be a voice that is trained like an opera singer's voice: to fill a large space. It is unnatural. Actors have to be heard and their voice may therefore develop a sonorous quality that they can't quite get rid of, so you think actors are as pompous as their voice is large. I suppose Damian was thinking of that a little bit, too.”

To settle this dispute, we believe Mandy Patinkin is only man for the job, as he will be able to see both sides, having worked with Lewis on Homeland, and (at least before he shaved off his beard) coming as close as humankind can come to physically resembling a wizard.